Jazz.com is One Year Old Today – Jazz.com | Jazz Music – Jazz Artists – Jazz News

December 09, 2008 · 2 comments

Jazz.com is One Year Old Today

Today jazz.com celebrates its first birthday. And what a whirlwind year it has been! A team of more than 50 writers has published 3,662 track reviews, 277 blog entries, 101 interviews, 84 Dozens, and 180 new entries to our Encyclopedia of Jazz Musicians. I get a twinge of carpal tunnel syndrome just thinking about it.

From the start, we aimed to do some things differently from the rest of the jazz media.

(1) We decided to review individual tracks instead of entire CDs, a move that makes more sense in this age of downloading, and also allows jazz.coms critics to be far more specific in evaluating the music;

(2) We have worked to integrate the content on the sitesince the ability to move quickly through diverse material via links is one of the key advantages to Internet publishing;

(3) We have emphasized the visual arts, working to enlist the best talents we could find to participate in our endeavor;

(4) We have paid our writers (sad to say, a rarity in the world of jazz web media) since this is the only way to assemble the quality contributors and achieve the professional standards we have set for jazz.com;

(5) We put a greater emphasis on the heritage and history of jazz music than most other members of the jazz media, realizing that in this day and age there are many great CDs that didnt come out this month and many deserving artists who no longer grace the stage; and

(6) We have worked hard to create a community, giving visitors opportunity to comment and contribute, in the belief that the interactivity of the web will allow us to do things far beyond what is possible in print media.

We have been delighted by the feedback. With no marketing or PR, jazz.com has built a signficant audience. And site traffic continues to grow at a 10-15% compounded rate per month. I suppose this pace of increase will slow at some point, but it has actually been increasing in recent months. Needless to say, the whole team is encouraged by the response.

Here come a long list of Thank Yous, to the many individuals who have helped in various ways during our pre-launch and first year of operations. I want to thank Fry Aagre, S. Victor Aaron, Richard Abowitz, Scott Albin, Jim Allen, Ben Allison, Rob Bamberger, Bill Barnes, Sergio Bayona, Kenny Berger, Jerry Blank, Bob Blumenthal, Randy Brecker, Bobby Broom, Keith Henry Brown, Mike Brown, Meredith Bunche, Greg Campbell, Bill Carbone, Rick Carroll, Steve Carlton, Scott Carter, Suzanne Cerny, Martel Chapman, Zoie Clift, Stanley Crouch, Marjorie Crusca, Thomas Cunniffe, John DeCarlo, Marissa Dodge, Jonathan Dryden, Peter Erskine, Brad Farberman, Marcel Fleiss, Roanna Forman, David Franklin, Will Friedwald, Gary Giddins, Tom Greenland, Steve Greenlee, Danny Greenspun, Ratzo B. Harris, Bill Harrison, Scott Homewood, Ron Hudson, Vijay Iyer, Todd Jenkins, Andy Karp, Dave Kaufman, Chris Kelsey, Bill Kirchner, Jos L. Knaepen, Tami L. Kowalkowsky, Walter Kolosky, Dave Krikorian, Karen Kucharski, Alan Kurtz, Doris Kushner, Ed Leimbacher, Matt Leskovic, Mark Lomanno, Tom Lord, Joe Lovano, Brian Lynch, Howard Mandel, Andrea Mann, Greg Marchand, Eugene Marlow, Ashley Matsui, Matt Miller, Ralph A. Miriello, Jason Moran, Darren Mueller, Frank Murphy, Marc Myers, Stuart Nicholson, Eric Novod, Galen OHanlon, Eric B. Olsen, Chad Oslund, Ted Panken, Jared Pauley, Tomas Pea, Joe Petrucelli, Dr. Lewis Porter, Cliff Preiss, Don Pulver, Thierry Qunum, Eric Reed, Sue Russell, David Sager, Mark Saleski, Judith Schlesinger, Loren Schoenberg, Makkada B. Selah, Cynthia Sesso, Marcus Singletary, arnold jay smith, Herb Snitzer, Patrick Spurling, Jeff Sultanof, Michael Symonds, Lucy Tauss, Jacob Teichroew, David Tenenholtz, Neil Tesser, Eric Wendell, DeWayne Whitaker, Tim Wilkins, Pete Williams and Brendan Wolfe. (Phew! . . . I hope I didnt leave anyone out.) And a special thanks to the jazz fans who visit our site regularly and comprise our growing on-line community.

But year one is just a starting point, and only baby steps. On to Giant Steps!

This blog article posted by Ted Gioia.

Tags: